the clown waits for the tingling
bell of classical conditioning
to produce the act for retaining
every measure of survival —
i had never seen the red-nosed
darling open his carnival mouth of
blood candy & enameled smokes.
he told me of a lion’s solipsism
jumping through the hoops of
an urban jungle, quite similar to
a modern generational shift, from
a Randian objectivism to graffiti.
~
the bell is rung at the last step of
a sleepy night’s solo performance,
to wake me from a circus dream
in which i am but a rope dangling
from the canopy,
for all the poor souls
to climb, and flee from
a cannibal crowd, caterwauling
like Circe in waiting.
.
© Anmol Arora 2018
For dVerse Poetics: Come to the Circus!
Image source (Circus, 2011, by Leslie Bender)
*Edited some more for With Real Toads’ Tuesday Platform
***
I have been working on a new Insta handle for over a month now, for literary and creative posts: @anmol.ha.
For contact, you can reach out to me through my multiple profiles, enlisted here.
